Hawaii with Kids: Beaches on the Big Island

BEACHES!!!!!

I mean, of course! You can see all the volcanoes and petroglyphs and ki'i that you want, but at the end of the day (and the beginning of the day, and the middle of the day, and spontaneously on the way to every single other place) you're going to find yourself at the beach.

Living in our swimsuits as we did was actually pretty great for our luggage, as we only brought as much as we could carry onto the plane (since we used two different airlines, it would have cost a whopping ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS just to check a single bag for our trip. There was nothing that I wanted to bring that badly!). And when you're already wearing your swimsuit, well, when you pass that sign for the beach, you might as well pull off and jump in the water!

Big Island beaches aren't really the kind that Hawaii is famous for (well, other than the black-sand beach and the green-sand beach, of course...); the Big Island is just too new, and therefore too rife with sharp lava rock. I don't think we'd been on the island for four hours before I got my first cut on the lava rocks, and Will walked out of the water at that same beach with a cut on her leg just streaming blood--shark bait!

Also, FYI? Lava rock cuts hurt a LOT!

At Kiholo Bay, for instance, which we visited because Will particularly wanted to see the Queen's Bath, not only were we completely unable to find the Queen's Bath (although we did see wild goats), but Will, while wading out in the remarkably rocky surf, fell, cut herself and got a sharp splinter embedded in her finger, sat down on a rock in the water to tend it, got pulled out too far by an undertow in a wave that hit her, struggled her way back to the shallows, sat down to tend her finger, got pulled out too far by a wave again, repeat ad infinitum, while her grandmother and I were standing just on the other side of the sharp rocks shrieking at her (me with a lot of swears, I fear) to come back to the goddamned beach before she fucking drowned already!

Again, my swears. I was very upset.

It was only when I began to clamber across the sharp rocks, myself, that Will deigned to "hear" us and come back to safety. Even the most stubborn kid in the universe knows that if her mother has to come and GET HER, well, the universe has never seen the trouble that will then fall upon that kid.

And that is why we used to call the kid Undertow until, by her request, we changed it to Riptide, because she says it sounds cooler.

It took one and a half weeks for that lava rock splinter to work its way out of her finger, in case you're keeping score. Along with that, add the approximately 18 hours that it took for the child to thwart my explicit instructions to "please obey me in front of your grandparents so that they think that I know how to parent you." No problem, though, as I rarely fool anyone on THAT front, sigh...

Lava rocks notwithstanding, we did, of course, find some lovely beaches on the Big Island. Later that same day, after snorkeling and tide pools and Pu'ukohola Heiau and before petroglyphs, we found ourselves at Spencer Beach Park, a beach with sand, not too many rocks, plenty of shade, and tons of local families so you know it's legit:

Even on this sandy beach, you see that there are still rocks. We didn't find a beach completely lacking rocks until Oahu.

We found other beaches where it was fun to bob in the waves and play in the surf (Matt lost soooo many pairs of sunglasses on this trip!), but when it came to simply wanting to swim, our resort's pool was always a sure thing:

Syd cannot get it through her head that she doesn't *really* need to hold her nose underwater anymore.

But what the Big Island may lack in conventional beaches, it has in abundance in regards to specialty beaches! We didn't visit the green sand beach, because it requires a hike that the grandparents weren't up for (three miles down, and then when you're done and you're all hot and exhausted, you've got to hike three miles back up!), but we did spend a morning at Punalu'u Black Sand Beach, which turned out to be by far my favorite beach on the Big Island:

Sea turtle! We saw LOTS of sea turtles in the water, but this is the only turtle that we saw chilling out on the beach. You've got to stay pretty far away from them, which is nearly impossible in the water, as you can't always see them until they're right up on you. Here on the sand, however, you can get a nice, long look through your telephoto lens:

There were turtles swimming all around in the water with us, too--you'd be bopping around in the waves, and then see a flipper or a head pop up a few feet from you.

Probably looking at a turtle.

Just look at that sand. I LOVED this beach!

Can you tell from these photos that the weather was just gorgeous? We only had a couple of rainy days during our entire trip. I'm looking at these photos right now, chilly in my sweatpants on this cold Indiana morning, and wishing that I was still there in the water. 

At Spencer Beach Park, we met a haole family who lives on the Hilo side of the island. They told us that they were soon to move back to the mainland, to Idaho, in fact, so that their children could "experience the seasons."

I've experienced the seasons, and let me tell you, I'd rather be spending every single one of them in Hawaii!

Hawaii with Kids: Exploring the Hawaiian Monarchy on the Big Island

We're baaaaaaaaack!!!

We had a fabulous time in Hawaii! Beaches! Cheap, delicious sushi! Sea turtles! Volcanoes! Both kids learned to snorkel, Will and Matt learned to surf, we hiked and swam and explored and had ourselves the best possible vacation. And this time there were NO pet catastrophes while we were away--yay!!!--and now we're just struggling to get past our jet lag and get back on the Eastern Time Zone schedule, one that is SIX HOURS later than where we've spent the last two weeks.

For instance, it's 5:30 in the morning in Hawaii right now. Yawn. The kids have just gotten up, although tomorrow they'll have to get up a LOT earlier in order to go to ice skating and ballet. They are not going to be pleased.

Instead of breaking down our vacation chronologically, which I think would be boring for you ("We did this, and then we did this, and then we did this other thing!", etc.), I'm going to highlight the themes that I emphasized. Since we went to Hawaii with kids, obviously everything was more-or-less kid-friendly, if not just plain kid-centric, and so much of what we did was based on things that I wanted to explore as a family, for the kids. When you homeschool, a vacation is really just a homeschool field trip!

One of our major areas of study in our Hawaii unit is the Hawaiian monarchy: not only is the monarchy interesting in itself, and a good opportunity to study a different form of government for my kids who haven't done a lot of British history yet, but the way that groups have historically taken over, or been taken over, has turned into a theme that we've been emphasizing lately. Will and I, especially, have been having a lot of heavy discussions about how the punitive response to Germany after World War 1 led in many ways to Germany's actions in World War 2, just as the US embargo on Japan had consequences, just as Israel's actions against Palestine have consequences, etc.

Tangent. Did I mention that it's not quite 6 am in Hawaii time? Here in Indiana, I'm sleepy!

On the Big Island in Hawaii, there are some well-preserved vestiges of the early Hawaiian monarchy. We visited two national parks dedicated to this. Pu'ukohola Heiau is a great one for exploring the early monarchy system, in which the Hawaiian islands were divided among several monarchs, and the beginning of one united monarchy under King Kamehameha I.

And of COURSE there is a Junior Ranger program!

Protip: Bring your own pencil case with pencils, colored pencils, and a pencil sharpener with you to national parks that have Junior Ranger programs. The park will usually give your kid a pencil, but sometimes it's just a golf pencil, and even though many Junior Ranger books require coloring or drawing, they don't often have crayons to lend, and even when they do, it's just the little pack of restaurant-style crayons that they have to offer. The kids can work much more contentedly, and at a higher level, when they've got a full set of good supplies.

This park tells the story of the youth who grew up to become King Kamehameha I, as well as the story of how he united the Hawaiian Islands. The highlight of the park is this heiau that Kamehameha had built and dedicated to their war god:

He summoned his cousin, a rival king, to this place, ostensibly to sign a peace treaty, but when the cousin and his party arrived, Kamehameha and his party killed them all, fulfilling a prophecy and leading to the unification of the islands.

You can't go inside the heiau unless you're a native Hawaiian doing something of religious or cultural significance, but you can walk a trail that meanders around to a view of a submerged temple dedicated to shark gods:

The black-tipped reef sharks used to be fed here daily, and still congregate here. Will and I reckon that we saw one through the binoculars!

Will also became very interested in Hawaiian weapons here--lots of koa wood and shark teeth--but the recreations in the gift shop were all hundreds of dollars, alas. A future DIY opportunity awaits!

On another day, we all went to Pu'uhonua O Honaunau, the site of royal grounds and a sanctuary for kapu-breakers:

The kapu were royal laws--some were good, some were nutty, and the breaking of any one of them was punishable by death... unless you could reach the pu'uhonua in your district. To get to this one, you had to swim across a bay to this place:

These ki'i tell you that you're on royal or sacred ground. Come into this area, or even let your shadow fall into it, and you've broken kapu:

I super want a model of one to put at the edge of my yard, but that would probably be culturally insensitive.

As former royal grounds, the national park here gives a good example of what royal life looked life. Lovely huts, a fishing pond, a place to worship, a place to play games--

Konane is a game played with black and white stones. You can jump in a straight line over your opponent. The kids fought EVERY single time they played it.

Here's an original one that was actually played by royal Hawaiian children.

 The indentations in this huge rock were maybe used for pounding poi, and maybe for evaporating salt out of seawater:

Kiddo loves her coconuts!

You're rarely going to see my children's faces on this vacation, on account of I sewed these fair-skinned babies giant bucket hats and made them wear them every time they went outside. 

We saw many, many, many of these Moorish idols while snorkeling, but of course I can't take my camera snorkeling! Here's a school that we saw in a tide pool here:

Later, on Oahu, we visited the Bishop Museum to see a larger overview of the monarchy, including a biography and artifacts from every single monarch. I'll tell you all about that another time!

As far as touring tips for your own Hawaii vacation with kids: neither site was riveting, but they both had Junior Ranger programs. If you don't have kids who are super into Junior Rangers and/or you're not making a study of the Hawaiian monarchy, only Pu'uhonua O Honaunau is probably worth a visit, and then only because it's the best example of ki'i that we saw on our entire trip, and ki'i are pretty impressive. There's also a superb and kid-friendly snorkeling site, Two Step, just before the gate to this park, and through the gate, but to the left of the actual park, there's a drive that leads to a lovely picnic spot and tidepooling area.

If you've got kids who are into wildlife spotting, or who are older, patient, and handy with the binoculars, Pu'ukohola O Honaunau is worth visiting at low tide, binoculars in hand, to look for the black-tipped reef sharks. We saw lots of wildlife on this trip, but this is the only place we saw a shark!

Finally, here are some additional activities to enrich or add context to a study of the Hawaiian monarchy. We did some of these, and some I've set aside for the next time we study Hawaii:

• Read this graphic of the Hawaiian monarchs. We have this up on our wall with our other Hawaii visual materials. 
• Watch the American Experience episode on Hawaii's last monarch. This was really dry, so I didn't make the kids finish watching it, but Matt and I did. Even we had trouble getting through it, but it was worth it for the information.
• Make a paper ki'i. I will make the kids do this, because I want them!
• Complete a shark unit. I don't think we'll do this, but a visit to Pu'ukohola O Honaunau could easily inspire an entire unit on sharks.

And if you're worried that all I'm going to show you of our trip to Hawaii is a billion museums and historical sites, don't worry--tomorrow I'm going to show you some beautiful beaches!

To Do in Hawaii

I know you know that we've been studying Hawaii for months now, so I KNOW you know that I have a definite list of things that I want us to see and do while we're there! Here are the things that we're definitely going to do, the things that we're maybe going to do, and the things that we're not going to do even though I want to:

We are definitely going to do these things!

• Attend a luau. The kids' grandparents are going to treat us to an evening at a luau, and the kids are VERY excited. We haven't booked it yet, but we're probably going to attend either the Sunset Luau or the Haleo Luau.
• Explore tide pools. I mean, of course! I'm also looking for tide pools that you can snorkel in, because that's something that we want to learn on this trip. Possibilities include the Kapoho tide pools. 
• See the petroglyphs. There are petroglyphs in Volcanoes National Park, but I'd also like to check out some of the other spots where they're found. This one isn't far from where we'll be staying on the Big Island.
• Spend a day at Volcanoes National Park. Honestly, I want to spend our whole trip here! The kids are going to LOVE this place, and they have a Junior Ranger badge!
• Summit Mauna Kea. Matt and I are going to do this while the kids' grandparents babysit, and I am so excited!
• Touch the southernmost point of the United States. While it's not the southernmost point of US territory (that's American Samoa), Ka Lae is the southernmost point of any US state, and it's theorized that it might be the original settlement point of the Polynesians to Hawaii. It's also close to the green sand beach, which is a maybe.
• Visit the Bishop Museum. It's an ASTC Passport museum, which means it's free for us, and it has Hawaiian historical and cultural exhibits. 
• Visit the Pacific Aviation Museum. It will provide the hands-on experience of World War 2's air warfare that we need, and Will LOVES aircraft and flying.
• Visit Pearl Harbor. THIS is the entire reason behind our months-long study of World War 2! I've already purchased our tour tickets, and we need to remember to print the children's Junior Ranger books, as they're not available on-site. We plan to spend up to a full day here.
• Visit the Pu'ukohola Heiau National Historic Site. It will add context to our study of Hawaii's monarchy, AND there's a Junior Ranger program!

We are maybe going to do these things!

• Hike a lava tube. I think it would be excellent, and the kids would love it, but we'll just have to see how it fits into our days.
• Hike to the lava flow. I SUPER want to do this, but the organizer told Matt to call closer to our trip to see if they'd even be running the hikes then, and I also don't know if they're kid-friendly. This one, for instance, is something like 10 miles, and is too intense for me, much less the kids.
• Find Ernie Pyle's grave in the National Cemetery. It's not mandatory, though. We'll see how our days go.
• Tour a coffee farm. I would LOVE this, but I don't think it would be more special than any other farm to the kids.
• Visit a green sand beach. Papakolea Beach is one of only four green sand beaches in the world, but getting to it is probably more of an ordeal than grandparents should muster.
• Visit the Waikiki Aquarium. Will read the biography of the monk seal KP2, who now lives at the Waikiki Aquarium, so we might go to see him. We just visited an aquarium in Chicago a couple of months ago, however, AND if we're going to see sea life, I'd rather do it on the Hawaii beaches, so we might not.
• Watch whales. I'm not sure if the season has even begun yet, and again, this is something that we could possibly do in California.

We are not going to do these things, even though I want to!

• Take a helicopter tour. The kids would freaking LOVE this, but it's too expensive to work into the budget. Another time!
• Take a surfing lesson. I think the kids would love it, but Matt says there are plenty of places to try this in California, which we visit more often.
• Tour the Hawaii state capitol building. It has beautiful architecture, and Will was struck by the fact that some of the senators and members of Congress wear Hawaiian shirts and leis to sessions. If they were in session, we might have seen about stopping by so she could see them, but they're not.
• Visit the Polynesian Cultural Center. I'd like to take the kids there, but it's just too expensive. I'm hoping that we can have some of the same sort of cultural experiences at the national parks, however.
• Visit the USS Bowfin. The kids' grandfather used to be a Navy officer on a submarine, so it's something that I'd like them to learn about, but it doesn't look like this museum lets you really get inside the submarine and explore.

I'll be taking a couple of travel guides with me, so I'm sure this list will expand, but I'm keeping my hard priorities--volcanoes, sea life, family, BEACHES!!!--in my head, so that I don't overschedule our trip.

Although if ever there was a human who could find a way to do ALL THE THINGS, I am crossing my fingers and hoping that that human is me!

Newborn Baby Gown to American Girl Doll Outfit

This hack of a newborn baby gown into a complete American Girl Doll outfit *does* work, although I'm not nearly as pleased with the outcome as I am when I make the much simpler newborn baby onesie to American Girl Doll T-shirt. A baby gown, even the newborn size, is just roomier than a onesie, I guess, so although the skirt works fine, the shirt is too loose:

Anyway, here's the complete outfit:

And even though you might think that simply cutting off the bottom half of the baby gown would be simpler than making a skirt from scratch, you still have to make a casing for the elastic, pull the elastic through, then finish sewing the casing closed.

It's actually much simpler, I think, to make my favorite double-sided wrap skirt with Velcro tabs, and that skirt looks nicer, as well:

Ah, well... there's much to be gained just in the process of experimentation, and Syd, at least, doesn't seem to mind the fit:

That purple/My Little Pony Skirt and grey/Dalek skirt are both in my pumpkin+bear etsy shop, by the way, along with rainbow candles, a beeswax moveable alphabet, and a couple of sets of bean bags, among other treats and treasures. After we get back from Hawaii, I need to shift my shop prep into high gear for Christmas, because those sales are my Christmas budget, and I suppose that my own kids would like something besides rainbow candles and bean bags for Christmas, sigh...

Work Plans for the Week of September 21, 2015: World War 2 and Hawaii!!!

School went peacefully last week--

--although the fact that we took a spontaneous day off to hike with some new friends necessarily meant that we didn't try to accomplish everything on last week's work plans. What didn't get done last week, however, will have to be put on hold until the middle of October, because this is our last week of school until after our vacation, and we are spending it focusing on Hawaii and World War 2!

Well, and the unusual plethora of outside activities that we have this week, including THREE Girl Scout events, two library workshops, and a playdate on top of our regular volunteer work, playgroup, and classes.

Books of the Day this week are all things World War 2 and Hawaii. Memory work for the week consists of the vocabulary from the weekend's Mandarin class (I was correct that the second go-round of the class is really helping the material click for the kids; Syd, in particular, is feeling much more confident), chapter 2 of Wordly Wise (Syd is in book 4 and Will is in book 6), a page of cursive each day (Syd uses the secular version of New American Cursive book 2, and Will uses Teach Yourself Cursive, although she's got some extra copywork on cursive capital D today, after she made an utter hash of it on Friday), and since I want Will to review fractions terminology this week, I'm asking Syd to practice her newer ballet moves, just so nobody can declare that their work is unevenly distributed.

In addition to the kids' daily chores, I am also requiring each kid to have $50 of her own spending money to take to Hawaii. Syd has twice that but won't spend it, and Will generally earns only enough money each week to buy herself a ring pop or cotton candy at the drive-in, so I think they'll both be working from the list of "Hawaii chores" that I've made for them. I'm requiring them to earn 1/8 of this total each day, as well as complete their schoolwork and regular chores, to unlock their hour of screen time.

And here's the rest of our week!

MONDAY: We've got our weekly volunteer gig later, but we should have time to both begin Wordly Wise and finish today's Math Mammoth (Syd is still in multi-digit multiplication this week, and Will is still in fractions) before we go.

Good thing, too, because this afternoon is all about party prep! I wanted to finish off our brief unit on Christopher Columbus with fanfare, so we're having a family Columbus party tonight. The kids are I are going to make baked potato boats (basically a baked potato cut in half with a chopstick mast stuck in), a Jello ocean with gummy fish swimming in it and orange slice boats sailing on it, a carved watermelon boat, and a batch of brownies cut and formed into a boat... somehow. There will also be games, which I'm imagining will be mostly along the lines of tying ropes to Rubbermaid bins and pulling each other along in them. And I'm contemplating a family driveway art project of the Atlantic Ocean and its bordering continents that our cardboard Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria can sail across, but we'll see if we're uninjured enough after our Rubbermaid bin races to deal with that.

TUESDAY: Do NOT let me forget to go to the hardware store for a diamond Dremel bit tonight, because tomorrow, after reading about petroglyphs, we're going to carve some!

I'm looking forward to playgroup as my chance to chat with other adults while the kids run around, and we'll likely head to the library afterwards to read and do math until it's time to drop Syd off for her Girl Scout workshop making friendship bracelets.

WEDNESDAY: This morning will see us right back at the library for a homeschool workshop on programming, and I'm contemplating just staying downtown all day until Syd's ballet class that evening. We like the audiobook version of Story of the World, though, so we'll have to find someplace where we can listen to chapter 28 so that the kids can answer the quiz questions (I make them into tri-fold brochures for them, and then after they answer the questions they fold up the brochure and decorate the front). Chapter 28 only mentions Pearl Harbor briefly, but it's necessary context for our trip there.

THURSDAY: The mapwork for chapter 28 provides more useful context, so we'll work through that and Math Mammoth before we head off to our Girl Scout meeting! Will has horseback riding afterwards, and Syd and I have a couple of projects that we need to finish up--the curtain that she wants in front of her bunk bed, and the decorated front door of her doll house.

FRIDAY: Syd has a friend coming over to play on this morning, which means that neither kid will likely get this schoolwork finished. However, I would like them to research at least one more Hawaiian plant or animal that we can look for on our trip, and I would like them to have a little more knowledge of Japanese war planes, in preparation for the trip the the Pacific Aviation Museum that we're going to take in Oahu.

Will, in particular, is going to be a busy girl, with both a library workshop and a Girl Scout event on this day. With her occupied, however, Syd and I should be able to finish up our own projects before the weekend!

As for me, I need to get all of my writing assignments written and all of our vacation plans made, make sure I'm on-track with a couple of longer-term assignments, and finally finish up registrations for my Girl Scout troop, while apparently playing kid-chauffeur all over freaking town.

I have often noted that, good thing, writing can be written anywhere! And so can Girl Scout paperwork... yay.

The DIY Pinata Racket

Even knowing that this project was mostly an excuse for two children to split an entire bag of candy, I'm still a sucker for a kid-initiated, kid-made project, and so when Syd put balloons and candy on the shopping list so that she could make herself a pinata, I assured her that it was a wonderful idea.

And it was. Of course.

For the paste, Syd used a recipe from The Incredible Secret Formula Book, and while it was a more elaborate recipe than I would have chosen, she was able to make it independently and it worked great.

Don't you think so?

She also mounted the pinata herself, although I have no idea how.

Puffball and I stayed far away from the action.

And then they ate their candy, cleaned up their mess, and found some other mischief to get into.

It was another successful engineering project in another successful homeschool day!

The Monarchs and the Mexican Sunflower

I think that I've griped before about the fact that we have only one flower in our garden this year (and two tomato plants, two peppers, two basil, and two milkweeds).

But... what a flower! If you only have one flower in your garden, THIS is the flower for you!

It's called a Mexican sunflower. Friends gave the start to Syd for her birthday this year, and I have since asked for detailed instructions, suitable for the noob that I am, on collecting and saving the seeds from this plant, because I never again want to have a garden without a dozen or so Mexican sunflowers. It's that good.

We've seen cabbage whites drawn to this Mexican sunflower. We've seen swallowtails. We've seen hummingbirds. We've seen several species of butterfly that we haven't yet identified. And we've seen monarchs. So many monarchs!

I love how well you can see the pollen in these pictures. I'm glad we have so many butterflies, because we have not seen a single bee in our gardens this year.

The milkweed plants live in the same tiny garden as this Mexican sunflower, and although I've never seen the monarchs look interested in them at all, Syd claims that she saw a caterpillar on the milkweed as she was weeding around the plants one evening. I haven't seen any caterpillars for myself, although there's definitely caterpillar poop resting on a couple of cupped milkweed leaves, and some other leaves have definitely been munched on.

Do caterpillars leave their milkweed and do any wandering? I don't know, but I'm attempting to tread lightly in the garden, just in case.